Catherine Hickey

Pacific Coast and Central Valley Director

As Director of Point Blue’s Pacific Coast and Central Valley Group, I am an active member of three of Point Blue’s strategic initiatives teams: Protecting our Shorelines, Sustaining Water and Wildlife on Working Lands, and Inspiring Conservation Action. My focus is to help ensure that Point Blue’s science is relevant to real-world conservation challenges and opportunities for landowners, communities, managers, and decision-makers regionally, nationally, and internationally.

For over two decades my conservation science work has focused on wetlands and shorebird ecology in the Pacific Americas Flyway with an emphasis on California’s coast and Central Valley. I have fulfilled leadership positions on Boards, Councils, and Steering Committees at multiple scales including representing Point Blue on the Management Board of the Central Valley Joint Venture, and serving as Hemispheric Council Chair of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network, Steering Committee member of the Pacific Americas Flyway Shorebird Conservation Initiative, and Advisory Board member of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Coastal Solutions Fellows Program. I initiated and have led the Migratory Bird Conservation Partnership with Point Blue, The Nature Conservancy, and Audubon California focused on wetland conservation in the Central Valley for over a decade. Along with Matt Reiter, I established our collaborative 13-country conservation science program, the Migratory Shorebird Project.

My role is to establish, grow, and strengthen partnerships and collaborations at all of these scales and with a diverse suite of stakeholders.